Top education officials detail challenges

Graduation rates, finances addressed at chamber's State of the Schools event

Oklahoma City Public Schools Superintendent Sean McDaniel addresses the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber during the State of the Schools event at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City Tuesday. (Photo by Jay Chilton)

OKLAHOMA CITY – Some of the state’s top education officials are settling into their new posts, and they’ve been working on their plans.

Oklahoma City Public Schools got a new superintendent this year, and the University of Oklahoma appointed a new president. Each of them talked about the challenges their systems face and how they plan to address them during the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber’s annual State of the Schools event on Tuesday.

Both Superintendent Sean McDaniel and President Jim Gallogly said their institutions need to improve their graduation numbers, but they’ll take different routes to get there. McDaniel focused more on equity issues within his district, one of the most diverse in the state and facing some of the highest rates of poverty. Gallogly focused on financial reforms the school will have to undergo to begin reinvesting in the faculty and double the university’s research efforts.

McDaniel said he heard the same questions time and again when he left his superintendent position in Mustang Public Schools for Oklahoma City. Many of them focused on the revolving door that has been his office.

“‘Are you aware that you are the 13th superintendent in the last 18 years?'” he said. “Yes, I am aware. ‘Are you aware that you are the fourth superintendent in two years?’ Yes, I am aware … I cannot see into the future, but my plan is to stay.”

He didn’t sugarcoat some of the district’s issues. Of the district’s 45,000 students, about 90 percent experience poverty to an extent that qualifies them for free and reduced lunches. One in four students have at least one parent who has been incarcerated. Last year, more than 3,000 were identified as homeless. In each classroom of about 25 kids, he said, 16 will have been diagnosed with or exhibiting symptoms of depression. When asked whether that makes his job more complicated, McDaniel said others’ lack of understanding is what makes education more complicated and that administrators systemwide need to implement more cultural sensitivity and averse childhood experience training.

“Our kids today are the most creative, innovative and compassionate kids we’ve ever had in any generation,” he said. “They’re going to make it, but they need our help.”

He said a cookie-cutter approach to defining success in the district would not work, but that it needs to increase its graduation rates, its attendance and its inclusion efforts.

The district has already begun implementing some programs meant to improve those indicators. U.S. Grant High School opened a child care center, where students who have become mothers can take their children during class.

“They don’t have to quit,” he said. “They don’t have to drop out. They don’t have to give up on their dreams.”

The district also implemented a program that creates a teacher track for bilingual non-teaching staffers. Oklahoma City students speak more than 50 languages, he said, and about 54 percent of them speak Spanish.

“We will pay 100 percent of (the staffers’) bachelor’s degree and plug (them) into the system as a teacher,” he said.

Gallogly said when he took over at LyondellBasell, the company was in bankruptcy, but that wasn’t going to be the only arena in which he would work to develop the organization.

“I said, ‘I came to help you become the No. 1 petrochemical company in the world,'” he said. “It’s all about expectations.”

Gallogly has been discussing publicly his aim of doubling the university’s research efforts. That will require public officials, the Legislature and the education community to pivot some of its attention toward postgraduate program funding.

He said the school has been working on its physical infrastructure, but that it needs to make more targeted investment in programs and faculty. Most members are getting paid at least 10 percent less than they should be, he said, and for some that number is closer to 20 percent.

“We have to invest in human capital,” he said.

Although he will be asking for the Legislature to consider making heavier investments into the higher education system, he said, he plans to make requests only if he and his staff can prove a return on investment. In the meantime, he said, OU will need to focus on finding efficiencies and ways to limit spending.

“Frankly, they’re everywhere,” he said.

He offered several examples. Employees still use paper time sheets. Different colleges within the university experience the silo effect, he said, indicating that different programs could be pooling resources but don’t.

Oklahoma’s higher education system as a whole faces similar challenges for several reasons, Gallogly said, including the number of institutions across the state. He said the state has dispersed its efforts across too many schools.

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